10 INFINITE PLACES

In the imposing building that formerly housed the faculty of sciences, a hotel designed and constructed through collective re-appropriation.
A hundred or so local actors (sportspersons, doctors, artists, scientists, social activists, biologists…), experimenting in turn to adapt this building to their specific requirements, have established an unprecedented program to accommodate citizen potentials.

1,188 hours of free french lessons for asylum seekers365 days open per year300 projects hosted per year (from one hour to three months)628 Lb of mushrooms harvested250 associations hosted per year only1 single key, never lost in five years1 ton of wood reused

In a former funeral home under a glazed roof, a cultural factory subtly combining the times, spaces, and desires of a heterogeneous public.
Its central halls are open for informal practices (jugglers, break dancers, comics, performers…) and are linked to a demanding artistic program, which shapes a hybrid artistic space in permanent transformation.

In the former mail sorting center adjoining the city ramparts, a long-term shelter project.
A collective dedicated to helping the homeless works through temporary use to reinvent from day to day the possibilities for a mixed-use shelter complex, that combines dwellings, workshops, gardens, cafeteria, child-care center, and auditorium, in an effort to actualize the dream in the complexity of the real.

In the former maternity ward of a major hospital and taking advantage of its vacancy of use, a temporary neighborhood has been put in place.
By enabling the coexistence of an emergency shelter for vulnerable persons, workspaces for young creators, and conviviality open to all, with festivals, a campground, or hot urban baths, the multiple actors in this temporary assemblage of social, artistic, and economic acts, will have called into question through their action the fate of this future eco-quarter.

In a Brutalist setting formerly used for the offices of a large industrial corporation, an island of collaborative work saved from demolition.
Through their temporary use, some forty artists, architects, musicians, graphic artists and artisans have managed to invent a generous cultural and economic vitality and have set aside the timeframes of traditional planning.

In a former convent in the heart of the town that was difficult to access, a shared and self-constructed habitat.
In the face of the loss of appeal affecting mid-sized towns, a group of inhabitants continues its daily work in a collective that can stand up to reality, through dwelling, work, construction, and festivity.

In former tobacco factories, a pioneering urban cultural quarter has been under construction over the past twenty-five years.
The ongoing densification of uses and users (workshops, auditoriums, offices, exhibition halls, gardens, a skate park, schools…) has succeeded over the course of time in generating an urbanism by means of culture, while in the process inventing its own governance, its processes, and its forms.

In a fragile and stigmatized area, an open artistic venue is a sign of an emancipatory cultural dynamic.
The stakeholders of this important project of opening up via culture, initiated in 2005 through a voluntary but unconvincing policy, have set in place an art based on trust and woven out of everyday activity starting out from an ephemeral building.

58 000 inhabitants in the two cities150 artists accommodated from the first year of operation18 elementary schools in the two cities15 ministers have visited the site since 20113 presidents have visited the site since 2011

At the fringes of the Paris X campus, an agricultural and artistic farm cultivates a fragile and radical avant-garde.
Between a recycled ballroom parquet, the favela-theater, and a kitchen open to the four winds, a new vernacular urbanism is being invented that combines the smells of animals in an urban transhumance with the poetry of people producing honey and electronic festivals, offering other imaginaries to all.

In the middle of 160 hectares (395 acres) left vacant by the Société Métallurgique de Normandie, the first steps towards establishing a “third place” for the circular economy.
In the face of the remains of Caen’s epic industrial saga, a group of local actors initiate the progressive recovery of the territory by building a construction site to ingeniously lead the way towards the reuse of the territory.

public (SEM Normandie Aménagement, Normandy region, communauté urbaine of Caen-la-mer, City of Colombelles, établissement public foncier de Normandie, European regional development fund, French environment & energy management agency)

2,000 visitors in 2017360 members of the association36 founding members of SCIC15 concerts11 lunches in the Cité de Chantier7 presentations in conferences on third places3 architectural and usage residencies1 reused lot in the consultation files for the contractors